


Nothing Makes Any Sense (But Everything Rhymes)

by JennaCupcakes



Series: Beauty and the Devil [3]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: (sort of), Anal Sex, Colter - Freeform, First Time, If You Squint - Freeform, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Outtake, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, ummm what else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:01:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21586531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: Safely up in Colter, Arthur wants to know what happened in Blackwater. Dutch wants reassurance. Only one of them can get what he wants.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Dutch van der Linde
Series: Beauty and the Devil [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519049
Comments: 9
Kudos: 111





	Nothing Makes Any Sense (But Everything Rhymes)

**Author's Note:**

> So this, I guess, is technically an outtake from my first Red Dead fic, [Nobody Righteous; Nobody Proud](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20751617), though I didn't write this until last night. I had the scene in my mind since I first started playing the game, but somehow it didn't make it into writing until now. 
> 
> It can be read as a standalone.
> 
> Title is taken from 'Waving at You' by The Mountain Goats. I know, I know, not a Hadestown title? People can change, I tell you.
> 
> Leave me a comment if you liked it. Comments produce the serotonin I need to survive my seminars and write more Red Dead fic.

Three days they’d made their way into the mountains now. Three days. It had been snowing the last two of them.

If Arthur was being honest with himself – and right now, being honest with himself was all he had – he hadn’t thought they’d make it, not with the Pinkertons, and Davey bleeding out under their hands, not with the weather and the way it worked against them. And now he was here, not warm, but at least not freezing to death, seated on a half-functioning bed in an abandoned hut that once upon a time had belonged to a miner. He’d never thought of a bed as something that could be half-functioning and yet there it was, with Arthur perched precariously on the side of it, convinced it would give way beneath him, half-eaten with rot as it was.

So far, it had held.

So had their luck.

“Arthur.”

The familiar voice of Dutch, coming from the doorway. Arthur hadn’t seen much of Dutch, at least not alone, which didn’t count as seeing Dutch at all. It counted as seeing the man Dutch put on for the gang, the man who led nigh twenty people and did so without breaking a sweat.

That Dutch found him now meant something to Arthur, and he wasn’t yet sure what. Maybe a chance to relieve some of the itch at the back of his head. The thing that sat in his gut. _Aberglauben_ , Strauß had said once, when Arthur had mentioned having a bad feeling, and had scoffed when Arthur called it superstition. _Not the same thing_ , Strauß had said. Not the same thing at all.

“Hey, Dutch.”

Dutch was wearing his coat indoors, same as Arthur. Same as all of them, really. The fur collar hid most of his face, the scarf hid more, and so did the hat. Dutch’s face was all eyes, dark in the half-light. Everything in halves here on this mountain.

He’d wanted this time with Dutch. He’d wanted the moment where Dutch was just Dutch, not beset by Micah or the responsibility to be a leader, nor the fearful eyes of the women, dragged into their hasty retreat as a stark reminder of the business they were all in. But now that Dutch was here, in Arthur’s room, and no one was around to expect anything from Dutch but Arthur, he suddenly found it hard to put one word after the other, as though he’d lost his words in his journals that had remained behind in Blackwater.

Dutch moved from the doorframe closer to the fireplace, letting the door swing shut behind him. He moved slowly, ambling almost, and Arthur relaxed a little bit seeing Dutch like that – more at ease than he had been dragging them up the mountain, finally free to let his guard down again just a little bit. The image of Dutch heading into Blackwater before the ferry job – a newly tailored waistcoat, buttons polished to a shine, hair slicked back neatly and pocket watch tucked safely into one of his pockets – stood in stark contrast to the Dutch who had headed up into Colter, with his face pale, wrapped in a coat and in shadow, with little time to shave before ushering his people onwards. Finally, Dutch seemed to move back towards the middle ground between those two extremes.

“How are you feeling?”

Dutch’s tone was conversational. His gaze was less so. Arthur held it, a little defiantly.

_Are you jealous_ , he’d asked. He’d asked for Arthur’s faith. And Arthur had given it.

“Fine,” Arthur responded, “Glad to be out of the way of that wind at least.”

“Goes right to the bones,” Dutch agreed.

He turned to the fire, held his hands out in front of it, turning them and flexing them. Arthur could picture the prickle of blood rushing back into them, the blessed warmth after too much time out in the cold.

He felt it, too, but not in his fingers.

“So we good, then?” Arthur asked, not quite the question that was really on his mind but the closest thing he could muster while remaining diplomatic. Hosea had taught him that, diplomacy. The art of conversation.

“I think so,” Dutch said, reasonably skeptical of making a deterministic statement, “They haven’t found us yet, and the weather is working in our favor. At this point, I reckon we’re beyond their reach.”

Dutch sounded sure of that, at least. It loosened the grip fear had had on Arthur’s gut somewhat. Of course, there was the other thing.

“Dutch, I’ve been meaning to ask –“

Dutch turned; eyes locked on Arthur. For a moment, Arthur paused.

“What happened? The ferry. How did it all –“

He made a gesture with his hands that tried to encompass what words couldn’t – all the Pinkertons and Jenny and Davey, Mac and Sean, and the quiet but insistent nagging of doubt that he hadn’t been able to shake since people first came flooding back to camp, with fear in their eyes and each one with a slightly different story to tell. If only he could hear Dutch say one word about it, Arthur was sure he’d feel better about the whole thing.

“The last couple of days were a lot,” Dutch said, “Let’s not talk about that right now.”

His voice had the clipped tone that suggested it was better not to argue, the tone that wanted obedience now and suggested that – if questions would be answered – questions would be answered some time in a distant future. And then there were the eyes.

“You know why I’m here, Arthur.”

The eyes. Arthur tried his best to meet them but failed. He knew why. Or at least, he had an idea. This was closer than Dutch had ever come to speaking of the thing that had happened between them in Blackwater, when Dutch had taken him aside and taken all the anger and frustration Arthur had felt, only to transform it and show it to Arthur for what it really was.

Arthur swallowed.

He knew that Dutch was still watching him because Dutch never took his eyes off a mark. Arthur focused on a piece of the rotting wall, where the paint was flaking off to expose the aging wood beneath, looking to steady himself. This place had no stability to offer him.

Dutch stepped towards Arthur, footfalls heavy in his boots on the wood, spurs clinking quietly with each step. Arthur knew the sound of his steps intimately, had heard it in every possible variation and yet he felt out of his depth when Dutch stopped before him, fitted a hand under Arthur’s chin and tilted it up, to meet Dutch’s face and the half-shadows that surrounded it. Under the brim of his hat, Dutch’s eyes looked starved.

Arthur didn’t dare breathe.

“Take off your clothes.”

It was an order, spoken as casually as Dutch ordered him around on jobs. Dutch’s orders were written into his bones, and Arthur’s hands were on his coat buttons before his brain caught up, and even then, he didn’t stop. Dutch still held his chin, firm but not bruising, tilted up just far enough that Arthur had to struggle a little to swallow.

He peeled off his coat and started on his shirt. When that came off, and the top half of his union suit was hanging from his hips, Dutch pulled him upwards, then released Arthur’s jaw. His hands found purchase on Arthur’s chest, touching it with careful reverence. Arthur stood stiffly, trying to ignore the shivers that went through his body at the touch of Dutch’s fingers. It had simply been too long since someone had touched him.

“You like this, Arthur?”

Dutch looked at him from under the brim of his hat, one eyebrow cocked as though he were merely making conversation. Yet underneath the casual demeanor was still the thing that Arthur knew to be Dutch, the instinct in him that drove him further than other men would go, the spark of determination that made him dangerous. Arthur took a breath that couldn’t reach as deeply into his lungs as he wanted it to, then nodded.

Dutch smiled.

“I’m glad.”

He went from hands splayed to fingers trailing over Arthur’s chest, two finding his nipple and tweaking it just a bit, the groan that spilled from Arthur’s lips a little too loud for these thin walls. Dutch leaned in.

“Shh, Arthur. Can’t take you out into the woods here.”

“S-sure,” Arthur forced out, his breathing – which had been so even just a minute ago –coming in quick bursts. It was the thrill of not knowing what Dutch was going to do next mixed with the blessed touch of someone on skin that hadn’t been touched in a long while, not counting Dutch.

“Lie back,” Dutch whispered in his ear and Arthur went, down on the bed, half-rotted as it was. It creaked under him, but it held. Time would tell how long that would last.

Dutch took off his coat and his scarf, set his hat aside and unbuttoned the front of his waistcoat. Then he straddled Arthur’s hips and bent down to plant a kiss on Arthur’s chest. His voice was a low rumble when he next spoke.

“I admire your strength, Arthur. You are truly something.” Another kiss, lips and teeth and Arthur gasping. “A fine man.”

“I’m not one of the ladies you need to woo, Dutch,” Arthur panted, erection now painfully obvious and straining in his pants where Dutch was straddling him and yet Dutch still insisted on subjecting him to this torture.

“I’m insulted you’d think I’d flatter you, son,” Dutch said, voice mildly annoyed but Dutch himself seemingly more preoccupied with Arthur’s right nipple, “When I am merely stating that which is plain to each and every one who’s ever laid eyes on you.”

Arthur’s hips bucked upwards, seeking friction. He could feel himself coming undone under Dutch’s touch once again, the unfamiliarity in the familiar too much to bear long. And then there was the fact that Dutch knew Arthur, right down to the bones. He knew him like he knew his guns, each little part that made him.

Dutch took care of his things.

Arthur shook his head, trying to escape from Dutch’s focus on his body, the strange reverence of it all. At the same time, he found himself wanting more, wanting Dutch to lay him out and touch him everywhere, lay to rest this thing he had awakened in Arthur.

“ _Jesus_ , Dutch…”

He kept his voice barely above the volume of an exhale, scared of the proximity of the others in their close quarters, but he needed to say something. He needed to hear Dutch say something.

Dutch let off Arthur’s nipple, sitting back up, and as he did, Arthur could feel Dutch’s breath and then the cold air over his chest. It lodged the next sentence he was going to say right in his throat, because – while other people had done this for him, a working girl in a saloon here or there – this was Dutch, his friend, his leader, and Arthur had a hard time convincing himself that this wasn’t supposed to happen when it felt so good, the way Dutch obsessed over his body.

“Look at you,” Dutch said, “A killer you are, Arthur Morgan.”

His hands on Arthur’s chest again, tracing the outline of the muscles. “My killer.”

All eyes, all hunger. The same look Dutch had given Arthur in the barn of the Adler farm, when he’d watched Arthur choke the O’Driscoll. Delighting in Arthur’s violence.

Arthur had never thought of himself as Dutch’s anything, but when Dutch said it like this, it felt true. He didn’t know what to make of that, of the way it almost comforted him to think there was at least one purpose to him.

He hefted himself up on his elbows, but Dutch pushed him down again, hand splayed flat on Arthur’s chest. Another command, this one unspoken. Dutch was setting the pace. Arthur wasn’t used to being ordered around doing this, and it felt strange to let Dutch lay him down, to let Dutch unbutton his pants and pull them down as though he were some kind of lady that needed to be taken care of. Arthur was the furthest from it. But Dutch was in control.

He devoted the same kind of attention to the rest of Arthur as he had to Arthur’s torso, with the exception of his cock. Arthur could feel the deliberateness of it and knew that Dutch was teasing him to get a reaction. Watch Arthur break before Dutch did. His mouth was moving across the insides of Arthur’s thighs and Arthur – incredibly sensitive – breathed heavy every time he felt Dutch’s stubble brush his skin.

Despite the fact that the room was drafty, Arthur didn’t feel cold, even naked and laid out as he was. His skin was feverishly hot, his face near burning and still Dutch had barely begun undressing. Arthur wanted to change that, but Dutch evaded his hands, swatting them away.

He shushed Arthur like he sometimes did the Count, a calming hum almost. “Just a little more patience.”

He got up from the bed, picked up one of the blankets and folded it up next to the bed. “Why don’t you come here?”

A command. And, strange as it was, Arthur obeyed.

He knelt on the blanket next to the bed and Dutch ran a hand up and down his back, a gesture that seemed soothing but made Arthur feel weak in his knees again. Too long since somebody touched him. Too long. He was getting soft, if this could be the undoing of him.

From the corner of his eye he watched Dutch strip off his waistcoat and roll up his shirtsleeves. Then he returned to Arthur, knelt behind him, and wrapped his arms around him.

“So good,” he murmured, “So good to me.”

He let go of Arthur again and placed one hand at the center of his back, bending Arthur over the bed. Arthur breathed in deep and exhaled again, and when he went to take his next breath, Dutch pushed a finger inside of him, slick and cool. The breath caught in his throat, Arthur’s eyes wide, but Dutch was still there, rubbing soothing circles on his back.

“Dutch…” Arthur muttered, not sure if it was a question or a warning.

“Trust me,” Dutch said, in a voice that left little room for argument. Arthur wondered how often Dutch had said _trust me_ when he’d merely meant for Arthur to shut up. His finger was moving in and out of Arthur at a steady pace and though Arthur would have sworn the discomfort of it was enough to turn him off there was something about the deliberateness with which Dutch stepped over his boundaries that sent shivers running in hot waves across his skin. Behind every line Arthur drew, Dutch found something he knew Arthur would enjoy.

Maybe Dutch simply knew better.

It certainly seemed plausible, the way he moved his finger slowly, added a second one only after a long while of Arthur panting, when Arthur was long beyond wondering how they would explain their absence or what they would do if somebody walked in on them. There was only Dutch’s touch, the way it hurt but in a way that made Arthur push back against Dutch’s fingers, and the way Dutch chuckled lowly when he noticed.

“Please,” Arthur said, not knowing what he was begging for. To be delivered from this, maybe.

Dutch passed that over as well. He kept Arthur bent over the bed for a good while longer – how long, Arthur couldn’t say, he simply knew it was too long – stretching him open with a third finger and Arthur swore he felt Dutch brush past a spot that knocked the sense right out of Arthur when he did. He could feel sweat running down his brow, bit his arm to keep himself from screaming or cursing Dutch, and by the time he heard Dutch’s belt buckle clink, the teeth marks had become purple indents on his forearm.

Dutch steadied himself with a hand on Arthur’s hip. Arthur’s breath hitched when Dutch pushed into him, and again he would have sworn he wouldn’t like this, but he did, and he pressed a hand over his own mouth, both for fear of their discovery and for fear of Dutch hearing the noises Arthur wanted to make.

When Dutch pulled out, Arthur felt manic – he’d never been touched like this, had never felt known like this, inside out and completely.

Dutch fucked him with slow, languid thrusts, almost cruel in his restraint while Arthur was sweating and cursing beneath him, his knees aching and the way it still hurt every time Dutch pushed back into him. Had this been anyone else, Arthur would have turned around, flipped them over and shown them what he thought of this, but Dutch hand one hand tangled in the hair at the nape of Arthur’s neck and Arthur knew exactly how poorly Dutch would take to any such attempt.

He would have to bear this, every last strange second of it. He couldn’t see Dutch’s face, but from the sound of his breathing even his composure was wavering, the snap of his hips increasingly more vicious. Arthur twisted the sheet in his hands and still studiously refrained from crying out when Dutch hit that spot again. Dutch must have felt him move, however, because he snapped his hips forward and Arthur’s knees went weak once more. Dutch did it again.

“Fuck, Dutch, please…”

“A little more patience, Arthur.” Arthur could have sworn the bastard was grinning, from the tone of his voice. “A little – _ah_ – more…”

His hips snapped forward deeper than before, and Arthur nearly yelled out a protest when he suddenly felt Dutch’s cock pulse warm inside of him. Dutch’s hand in Arthur’s hair tightened, pressing his face into the sheets of the bed, and he groaned quietly.

Arthur was now desperately rutting against the bed, his cock hard and trapped between Arthur’s belly and the sheets. He was so close that it fogged his mind, a whine escaping from between gritted teeth. Just a little more, a _little_ –

His orgasm hit him suddenly, where one second he’d been so desperate and embarrassed he thought it might kill him and the next his body seized up with white-hot pleasure. His cock twitched, and he could hear Dutch chuckle as though through a haze. One of Dutch’s hands ran a calming path up and down his back as Arthur shook under him.

Dutch pulled out slowly, and Arthur whimpered. He wasn’t proud of it, but Dutch had pushed him past pride, it seemed. He stayed there, bent over the bed, while Dutch did up his pants, until Dutch came back to sit down next to him and run long, familiar fingers through his hair.

“Thank you, Arthur.”

He rested his hand on Arthur’s head, gentle where he’d been forceful just minutes ago.

“Come see me later. We’ll… talk.”

Arthur’s face was burning hot. He couldn’t look at Dutch. He got up from the bed slowly, careful not to touch the wet spot he’d left there and grabbed one of his shirts to clean himself off. He could feel a trickle of Dutch’s come slowly drip down his leg and tried to ignore the way it made his cock twitch.

“Sure, I’ll, uh…”

The room was small. There weren’t many places to look at that weren’t Dutch. Arthur was still fully undressed, while Dutch had even put his waistcoat back on.

“Only if you want to, son. I understand you have enough pressing concerns, with the food situation being what it is and our best hunter out of commission.”

He got up. He didn’t look embarrassed, barely even looked exerted, and his smile was easy and pleasant as always. Arthur knew this man, and yet when he saw him like this it seemed to him like he didn’t know him at all.

“I’ll see you around, Arthur.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr at [veganthranduil](https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Oh, and don't forget about them comments.


End file.
